Youth Development Minister Ayodele Olawande has said the Federal Government will mandate its agencies and parastatals not to reject National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members posted to them for their mandatory one-year national service.
He said the ministry would send a memorandum to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on the issue.
Olawande recalled that in a memorandum sent to the NYSC, the ministry had directed that there should be no barriers to the posting of the corps members, saying the ministry was aware of the rejection of corps members from some agencies and parastatals.
The minister spoke yesterday in Abuja when he was asked about the possibility of corps members being rejected by some government agencies, despite the Federal Government’s directive revoking the ban on corps members being posted to the private sector.
On November 19, the Federal Government lifted the ban restricting the posting of corps members to the public sector, allowing NYSC members to be posted to private sector organisations, including banks and oil and gas companies.
The lifting of the ban took effect in the Batch C, Stream I orientation which will start tomorrow.
Olawande said: “Let them post them first, then we would tackle the rejection. In part of the memorandum that we sent to the NYSC, we clearly stated that there is no barrier.
“Before now, there was a barrier that corps members could not be posted to this and that. Banks come and take them. If you don’t have experience in banking, how do you want to know that you are good at accounting or whatever? We should stop lying to ourselves. This is also part of how you should learn whatever you studied.
“Very soon, we are also going to send a memo to the President to tell any government parastatal and agency not to reject (NYSC members) anymore. It is a process; we can’t do everything at once. The one in our capacity, we have thrown it out. So, on the barrier, we are also waiting. I know about that too. We will work, and that is why teamwork is good.”
Commenting on the delay in the payment of the new N77,000 allowance to serving corps members, the minister said the implementation was a process and that the corps members would begin to receive the allowances “very soon”.
He added: “It is a process. When the government increases so and so, it would follow a process. We are in the process. Very soon, they will see it. It is not rocket science. It has been increased; nobody is saying it has not been increased. But the implementation is in progress. Very soon, we are at the tip of it. It is going to start, and we will implement it perfectly.”
